Consistency Principle in Biological Dynamical Systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces a consistency principle across hierarchical levels in biological systems, deriving universal statistical laws and relationships that explain cellular and genetic phenomena, supported by experimental validation.

Contribution

It presents a novel principle linking molecular, cellular, and genetic levels, leading to new universal laws and insights into stem cell differentiation.

Findings

Power law distribution of gene expressions

Lognormal distribution of cellular chemical abundances

Relationship between genetic and phenotypic fluctuations

Abstract

We propose a principle of consistency between different hierarchical levels of biological systems. Given a consistency between molecule replication and cell reproduction, universal statistical laws on cellular chemical abundances are derived and confirmed experimentally. They include a power law distribution of gene expressions, a lognormal distribution of cellular chemical abundances over cells, and embedding of the power law into the network connectivity distribution. Second, given a consistency between genotype and phenotype, a general relationship between phenotype fluctuations by genetic variation and isogenic phenotypic fluctuation by developmental noise is derived. Third, we discuss the chaos mechanism for stem cell differentiation with autonomous regulation, resulting from a consistency between cell reproduction and growth of the cell ensemble.